


And After You Grow

by KChasm



Category: Batman - All Media Types, The New Batman Adventures
Genre: Annie survives, Gen, I reject your canon and substitute it with my own, The New Batman Adventures Episode: s01e08 Growing Pains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 03:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: It's hard, being alive. It's hard, being.





	And After You Grow

Robin smiles, that crooked, _kind_ smile that’s the most wonderful thing she’s ever seen in her life, and he says, “Hey, I’ll take care of it.”

And then he _does_. She doesn’t know who he is or who he knows, how he pulls the strings, but the envelope comes in the mail with everything in it—ID, social security, pamphlet with _Welcome, new student, to Gotham Heights_ in big, friendly letters—

(“I didn’t know what you wanted for a last name, but I thought this would be better than ‘Hagen,’” Robin says. They’re on the roof of Ms. Thompkins apartment, because the security bars over the window can’t hold Robin’s weight—tried that, very briefly—and besides, she doesn’t like the bars. They make her think she’s being kept in, even though she knows it’s the other way around and she can flow through them, anyway, if she really wants to.

She doesn’t want to. She leaves her door open, so there’s somewhere to run, and Ms. Thompkins never closes it after her.

She’s so _kind_. They all are. Did she never know, back when she was Clayface? That people could be this kind?)

It’s all so impossibly good that she’s _sure_ things are going to go wrong when she “transfers in” (everyone will know she doesn’t deserve to be here, fake person with a fake life who only knows enough to pass the tests because someone else went to school), but that doesn’t happen, either. There’s a boy, Tim, who comes over to her desk at break. She doesn’t know what he wants, wonders if _now_ is when she starts running again and this time never stops, but all he does is offer her a hand and ask if she wants to be _friends_ —

(“I was the new kid once, too,” he says. His hand is warm—she thinks. There’s something about his smile.)

Before she knows it, her life is settled into something routine. In the mornings, she helps Ms. Thompkins with breakfast, takes the bus to school where Tim says hello, passes her the latest classroom gossip, asks if he can copy her homework before first period starts (she can’t say no). Then, it’s the rest of school, and then back to the apartment, where she starts on her homework waiting to hear the tap at her window that means Robin is on the roof to ask her how she’s been and if she wants, maybe, to hear who he nabbed today (with Batman’s help, of course). To which she always says yes, of course, and tries not to look so obviously at his mouth when he smiles.

And then it’s back to homework, and bedtime, before she wakes up to do it all again.

It’s perfect. It’s wonderful. It’s _hers_ , and no one else’s, even if she was no one in the first place, and she can’t stand it, not at all. It can’t go on like this. She wants it to—desperately _wishes_ that it could—but it can’t. Someday, very, very soon, she’s sure, the shoe _has_ to drop.

She’s just waiting for it. And waiting, and trying not to crack this dream herself before it ends.

And then there’s the man with the gun.

* * *

She doesn’t know the man with the gun. She has nothing to do with him, and he has nothing to do with her, and later she’ll find out: Theft, assault and battery, evading the police, sheer _chance_ , of all things. The final bell rings, and she lets herself get caught up in the crowd milling for outside and buses and parents set to take them home.

And then there’s a man with the gun, who just—runs, runs for them, grabs Patricia McEown from third period by the arm and puts the gun to her head.

There are police officers. They have guns, too, and they tell the man to put his down. He doesn’t. And they’re shouting, and he’s shouting, and there is running and screaming and Patricia McEown is starting to cry—

And Annie thinks: _Caught_.

And Annie thinks: _I was, too._

And Annie thinks: _Someone has to do something_ and then _I_ _have to do something_ and then _this is how you wake up_ and she barely even notices that she’s walking toward the man (and the police are shouting, and he’s shouting, and everyone is shouting) before she says: “Let her go.”

She says it loud and clear. She knows how to properly project her voice. She was an _actor_ , even if she never really was.

The man with the gun scoffs. “Yeah, right, kid,” he says, voice shaking. Almost gestures with the gun before he catches himself. _Almost_. “I’ve been behind bars long enough already. If you and your pals in blue over there don’t want your friend to get hurt, you’ll stay here and _let me walk away_.”

“Fine. You need a hostage, right?” She tilts her chin up, more confidently than she feels. “Take me, instead.”

And _that_ actually knocks the panic from the man’s eyes. (It’s only the police shouting, now, but she isn’t listening.) “What, you playing hero or something?”

She’s not a hero. “Sure,” she says, anyway.

It’s almost funny, how carefully they swap. The man makes sure where he points the gun—to keep it at _someone’s_ head, right up until it’s hers and he lets Patricia go. Patricia collapses to the ground, at their feet, and desperately scrambles away, sobbing.

But safe.

And Annie is _okay_ with this.

“Alright,” says the man with the gun, attention back to the police, “same plan! You just stay here and don’t do anything stupid, and nobody gets—”

Her hand is at his wrist. Her hand is at _both_ his wrists, which is strange, because she’s at the wrong angle to do that, except of course she isn’t. Her hand is not a hand at all, but a thing that _flows_ , something that was skin, once, before an out-of-work actor took the worst job of his career. And that’s fine, because sometimes no one needs a hand.

Sometimes, they need a vice.

* * *

She’s running again, but it’s different, this time. She isn’t scared, anymore. And—

She’s not sorry, and that’s the most surprising thing of all. She was sure it would be terrible, when it happened—the breaking of the dream. But it _isn’t_. She thinks of Patricia’s back, stumble-running to safety, and—it seems _right_ , that it ended this way. More right than anything she’s ever felt.

And then Tim, of all the people it could have been, ruins it.

It’s nothing but chance again. She’s milling around at the open market, waiting for the old woman at the stand to turn her head so she can snatch an apple from four feet away when she feels the eyes on her back—she turns around, and he’s _there_. Seeing everything—her, stealing, her arm, stretched out past what anyone ought to be able to manage—

“Hey, _Wait_ —”

 _Now_ she’s scared. She runs.

So does he.

But she’s taught herself a little, since she stopped coming to school, stopped sleeping at Ms. Thompkins’. _Remembers_ , too—the tricks she knew when she was still Clayface. She leads him on a chase, into a parking garage. Turns a corner, and before Tim can see where she's going, stretches her arms to pull herself up and away to the second level—

And Tim is _already there_.

“Oh,” she says. She thinks she ought to run, turn tail and try another way out. She doesn't. Instead she lets her legs fall out from under her.

And sitting there on the asphalt, she thinks:

 _My skirt will get dirty_.

It’s a ridiculous thought, and it makes her laugh. A broken sound, for a broken dream.

“Annie,” says Tim. He comes close, too close. Close enough that if she leaned forward she’d call it leaning into him.

He says: “You missed class.”

And this is ridiculous, too. “Oh,” she says again, and: “I thought you’d say something else.”

Tim doesn’t respond to that, so she doesn’t say anything, either.

And then something comes into her vision. She looks up, and it’s his hand, offered her way, just like it was the first day of school.

“Everyone’s still trying to find you,” he says. “They were all worried—Patricia, too. She wanted to thank you, but you never showed up.”

She laughs again, and it doesn’t sound any better the second time around. “I can’t go back,” she says. “They saw—you saw, too, didn’t you? What I am.” Something runs down her face, and she wipes at it, thinking—maybe she’s melting, now. Maybe this is how she finally _stops_. Stupidly tragically dramatically, like something out of the movies she was never in.

Only when she takes her hand away, it’s not clay. Only—wet.

Oh.

She’s crying.

She feels more than sees it—Tim, moving even closer, crouching over her, like he's thinking to touch her but can't think of how. Which makes sense, of course, because who would want to touch something like her? Press too hard and she'll swallow him in mud.

Only Tim doesn't touch her, maybe, but Tim doesn't leave, either. Tim stays there, over her, fingers tracing over what she's using for shoulders. And then Tim says:

“Everyone knows who you are. You're a  _hero_."

She starts crying, then, and it’s _different_ than in the movies, crying, her face screwed up in great bawling sobs. She lets herself lean into him, lets her hand drop into his.

His hand is warm. _He’s_ warm. He must be. She’s sure of it.


End file.
